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That's one of those weird duolingo sentences.
But you can say "I'm homeless" with "Eu não tenho teto (ceiling)".
Actually one of the best translations for homeless is "sem teto".
We have the same thing in Persian. We say 'there's no ceiling above my head'.
And in German: "Er hat kein Dach überm Kopf" :-) Homeless would be "obdachlos".
This just remembered me of an old famous song for children....
"Era uma casa muito engraça, / It was a very funny house,
não tinha teto, não tinha nada. / It had no ceiling, it had nothing.
Ninguém podia entrar nela não / No one could get inside it
porque na casa não tinha chão. / because in the house there was no floor.
Ninguém podia dormir na rede / No one could sleep in the hammock
porque na casa não tinha parede. / because in the house there were no walls.
Ninguém podia fazer pipi / No one could take a leak
porque penico não tinha ali. / Because there was no pot in there.
Mas era feita com muito esmero, / But it was very diligently built,
na Rua dos Bobos, número zero." / On the Street of the Silly, number zero.
Eu prefiro; Eu não tenho carro, não tenho teto E se ficar comigo é porque gosta Do meu rá rá rá rá rá rá rá o lepo lepo É tão gostoso quando eu rá rá rá rá rá rá rá o lepo lepo
Wow, it's funny reading my comment after such a long time! Of course I got it completely wrong :-D And now I wouldn't guess it could be "no" for "around"...
Thanks for commenting :-)
Not "por aí". "Por aí" means around in the sense of "without a clear destination/location".
Is should be "em volta do" or "em torno do", or other fancy (fency? sorry) ways such as "rodeando o", "ao redor do", etc.
Ah! You are making my head explode with all these possibilities now dancing around my head without enough context to order them all up in my synapses! :D
Is that around just above what is meant by "por ai"?
Fency :D – I like it.
In "dancing around my head" it's "em volta da".
You're circling something.
Or maybe, if you really don't intend "circling", you can use "na". There is no exact path, but it's still your head. (May be seen as "dancing around in my head").
Check some examples of "por aí", which is a completely indefinite location:
- Te vejo por aí = See you around
- Vou andar por aí = I'll take a walk / I'll walk around
- Q: Cadê o gato? Ans: (Es)tá por aí.... = Where's the cat? It must be around somewhere....
"Por aí" comes from something a little more literal using "por + location", where "por" is a vague movement and "aí" is a vague location, making "por aí" totally vague.
- A formiga anda pela (por+a) mesa = The ant walks around on the table
- A menina corre pelo (por+o) apartamento = The girl runs around inside the apartment
Obrigado! It is starting to make sense, though there is a lot of other words swimming about looking for a place to land in my brain at the moment.
I appreciate the time you have taken DM to explain. It will help others who also find these comments. :)
It's some kind of wonderful, because they challenge us to really think, which helps us to really absorb the language (both of them).
Eu não tenho teto (I don't have a ceiling / I am homeless) is very common.
so does this sentence mean the same as "Eu não tenho teto" or is it a philosophical/psychological sentence?
It's a sentence for those who have got no walls to their imagination.
(No, it doens't have a particular meaning).
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It's a Mario Quintana poem: Eu não tenho paredes, só tenho horizontes - http://pensador.uol.com.br/frase/NzM4MTA4/
When duolingo shows example pictures of paredes, they are outside walls, like a stone wall in a field or the wall around the house with barbed wire on it. At my house, I don't have walls. I have a fence.
Duolingo is wrong. It shouldn't show a medieval/stone wall for parede.
parede = building wall
muro = fence wall
muralha = usually big ancient stone fence wall
Muro de Berlim = Berlin Wall
Muralha da China = Great Wall of China
Muro das Lamentações = Western Wall
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So,the picture would be a muralha? I wondered about Muro and thought something was wrong... obrigado :)
You're right, except for one:
"muro" means something that is around a building our a small terrain, but is not too big like a "muralha".
Fence wall means "cerca", "cercado", and you can also say "cerca de madeira".
Does "parede" refer to the walls of a house only, or also to a wall standing somewhere outside. I'm asking this because in my language, these two are completely different words and not interchangeable in most cases.
Thank you, now I also read it in a different thread. I think it's just like in German "parede = Wand" and "muro = Mauer".
My husband slept in a corner of the unfinished basement when he was a teenager- and he describes it thus "I had no walls, no closet..."
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The difference between muros and paredes is difficult to understand in this sentence because there is no context. If a house was speaking then, maybe Paredes would be right, but who knows?
